


Thriller, but without the kitschy ending

by ChasetheSun2



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood and Gore, Corpses, Gift Fic, Graphic Description of Corpses, Halloween, Haunted Houses, Horror, Other, Prompt Fic, Skeletons, Vomiting, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 08:25:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12577704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChasetheSun2/pseuds/ChasetheSun2
Summary: In which Jade is coaxed by her girlfriend to explore spooky houses despite her best judgement.It doesn't end well.





	Thriller, but without the kitschy ending

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween and Blessed Samhain! A gift scare fic for [Mace](https://masondarts.tumblr.com/) as part of the HADS Secret Scare event! The prompt I was given was Skeletons! I took a few liberties, but I hope you enjoy!

“Terezi, I’m not really sure if--”  
  
“SHHHH! Come on. You want me to get into the spirit of this Halloween thing, right?”

“Well, yes, but I don’t think that this is the way to do it.”

Two girls stood in front of a massive, dilapidated old mansion. It had been abandoned since long before they’d come, well going on into the decades since anyone had set foot into the place. The shutters were hanging off their hinges, banging against the peeling paint of the once-white house. Vines had begun to creep their way into every crack and crevice, crawling up the sides of the walls. Mold splattered the wooden doorframes, where they hadn’t already begun to rot.

The taller girl, a strong-looking, raven-haired human with round spectacles and fluffy white dog ears, frowned. “Look at it,” She said. “It’s falling apart. It’s dangerous.”

“HA! Isn’t that part of the thrill?” The shorter girl, a troll, could be described as nothing short of lizardlike, with sharp teeth, bright red eyes and black hair that glinted almost teal in the light. Lethal-looking conical horns jutted out from her skull. “Come on, Jade. I’ve seen scarier than this in my FLARPing days. Are you a scared little squeakbeast?”

Her honor challenged, Jade huffed and scowled, pouting. “It’s a _mouse_ ,” She said, taking Terezi’s hand and marching in. “And no, I’m not.”

Terezi cackled and followed her girlfriend into the house. The stairs leading to the outside porch creaked and Jade stiffened, but Terezi didn’t seem to care. The chipped and faded door was barely on its hinges, unlocked as she reached for the knob. It all but fell from its frame as she opened it, swinging dangerously. Jade scowled.  
  
“If the floorboards give in--”

“You can fly, right?” Terezi cut her off. “Come on. Stop being such a wriggler. This is fun!”

Jade grumbled about her girlfriend’s version of ‘fun’, but nevertheless kept following. There was no way she’d let Terezi do this alone.

Inside the house was surprisingly less rickety than the outside, but there was still a worrying look of disrepair about the place. If one were to imagine what a typical haunted house would look like, with its spiralling staircases, empty, dingy bookshelves and weird ripped-up paintings hung on the walls, this was it. The walls were painted a dark red, the cherrywood floors creaking and dusty. Several halls went off the main foyer, the wind whistling through the empty corridors and giving an eerie moaning noise that sent shivers down Jade’s spine and made her ears pin back.

“It….doesn’t look so bad,” She murmured, trying to be positive. At least she didn’t have the feeling that she was going to fall victim to shoddy construction anymore. Terezi smiled and squeezed her hand.  
  
“That’s the spirit.”  
  
Jade sighed. “You’re going to be the death of me someday.” She mumbled, walking forwards and ignoring her girlfriend’s cackling. Her steps were light and careful as she went, and she was glad to see that Terezi’s were as well. Nothing was giving way under her, thankfully, so she grew a little braver.

“Okay,” Jade said, taking a breath. “Where do you want to explore first?”

Terezi sniffed around, taking in the moaning halls, the spiral staircase, the myriad of closed doors and possibilities. With a hum of consideration she pointed towards a nearly-invisible door at the end of the westward hall. “There.” She said. “That one smells funny. I want to try that one.”

Jade wanted to point out that if something smelled ‘funny’ in an abandoned old house, that it was best to avoid it altogether for fear of finding something they didn’t want to. But Terezi looked so excited, tugging at Jade’s hand, that Jade couldn’t say no. This was all for her weird adrenalin junkie troll girlfriend, after all. With a sigh, she followed.

“If we die in here, i’m haunting you.”

Terezi gave a ‘psssh’ noise and walked down the west hall. It was illuminated by moonlight only, filtering in small rays through the holes in the moth-eaten curtains. The floor creaked under her and she was once again worried that she might fall through a hole. It held steady, though; Terezi led them by her nose, sniffing out that odd smell she’d caught earlier.

Now that they were deeper down the hall, Jade could begin to smell it too; the only time she’d ever caught a scent like that was when she’d opened Dave’s fridge and found that half his food was rotten. She wrinkled her nose.

“What is that?” She asked. Terezi gave a shrug.

“That’s what we’re going to find out, isn’t it?” She said. There was an excited sort of nervousness to her voice. Jade huffed and frowned.

At the end of the hall sat a simple wooden door. It looked so out of place - not just because it was so inelegant compared to the rest of the house, but also because it looked so _new_ \- like someone had only just recently put it there. Jade tilted her head. The smell seemed to be coming from there, having gotten stronger and stronger the further down the hall they went.

“I’m guessing you’re going to want to--” She started. Just as she’d been about to predict, Terezi gave a sharp-toothed smile, wrenching the door open.

A gust of hot, rancid wind blew into their faces. Inside the door was darkness; steps leading down into a sort of basement. Despite this, it was oddly warmer down there than in the rest of the house. Jade gagged and coughed, covering her mouth; Terezi looked utterly disgusted. “Gross!” The troll said, more excited than ever. “I wonder what’s down here that smells so bad!”

“Maybe we’re lucky and it’s just a weird cannery,” Jade mumbled, but the sinking feeling in her stomach told her that she was most definitely wrong. Terezi tugged on her hand and she sighed, following her girlfriend unwillingly.

The stench grew so foul the further down they explored that even Terezi had to cover her nose, grasping onto Jade’s arm so she wouldn’t trip. The stairs creaked and cracked threateningly underneath their combined weight and Jade’s heart leapt up in her throat. One gave way, Terezi’s foot falling through and she gave a yelp, clinging to Jade - who immediately lifted them both into the air.  
  
“Let’s not use those stairs anymore,” Jade said, clearly unnerved.  
  
Terezi was trying her best to remain stoic and unafraid, nodding so her voice didn’t betray her. Jade wasn’t fooled; she could feel the way that Terezi was clutching onto her shirt for dear life. She hesitated in the air, carrying her girlfriend with her.

“Should we head back?” Jade asked nervously.

Terezi’s claws nearly dug into Jade’s sides and she frowned, shaking her head no. “It’s probably just rotten wood,” She said after taking in a soothing breath. The stench didn’t help soothe her much. “The stairs are busted after all. Come on. Let’s not be wrigglers, this is fine.”

Famous last words, Jade thought. She swallowed down the urge to fly as fast as she could towards the exit and continued down the stairs.

It led her to a dingy basement; there was no light anywhere. It was weirdly humid and _hot_ , so much so that Jade had begun to sweat under her autumn clothes. The stench seemed to ride the waves of heat and jade had to pull her sweater collar up over her nose so she wouldn’t gag. It didn’t help much. Terezi coughed and gave a low groan.

“The hell is that?” She muttered, disgust in her voice. “It smells like-”

Jade pulled out her phone, turning on the flashlight function to see better in the darkness and suddenly knew exactly what it smelled like. She whirled and heaved as her dinner came back up on her.

Bodies. Dozens of them, littering the floor at the far end of the basement, piled in a grotesque mountain of desiccated flesh and bone. From the old, sticky stains on the floor it looked as if they had all been dragged there, one by one, over a period of time. Most of them were rotted away by now, but the heat rising from the fresher ones, trapped in the basement for so long, had turned the flesh on their bones to a sort of thick soup in a puddle underneath them. Jade had never seen something so horrifyingly disgusting in her life, and she’d mounted and stuffed her own grandfather. Vomit splashed on her shoes but she didn’t care. The sight and smell combined were too much.

“We need to go,” She gasped out once she finally had time for a breath. Terezi didn’t answer her. “Terezi? Did you hear me? We--”

“Shut up.” Terezi’s voice was unnaturally sharp, even for her, a hissed whisper that Jade barely heard. For some reason it frightened her more than the corpses. She straightened up, wiped her mouth and looked over.

She really wished she hadn’t.

Jade stared in wide-eyed horror as the bodies began to move. Disconnecting themselves from one another where time had linked their ribs, fused their flesh. It tore in places with sickening ripping sounds, sloughing from bone and dropping to the floor with a wet plop. The rattle and click of clinking bones made the poor girl sick to her stomach, watching unhinged jaws sway, limbs snapping back into place at unnatural angles. There were no eyes - or at least, very few that could still see - and yet, the horrid half-rotted creatures began to make their way shakily towards the pair.  
  
“Terezi?” Jade’s voice was a squeak. She fumbled for the other’s hand in darkness.

“Yeah?” Came the hardened, tooth-gritting reply in return. Terezi jumped when Jade found her hand, squeezing it tightly.

“Can we leave now?”

“Yeah.”

Instinct took over. Jade completely forgot about her abilities as a god; she raced towards the stairs as fast as her long legs would take her, Terezi in tow. She’d never run this fast in her entire life. Adrenalin flooded her system and all she knew at that moment was _get out, get out, run away, run away now!_

Terezi seemed to be in the same situation. Their panting breaths, the clicking of bones and the wet slap of rotten flesh echoed in their ears, spurring them on as they ran for the stairs. The noises seemed to be getting closer and Jade’s heart leapt into her throat. She all but dragged Terezi to the stairs, trying to get out as fast as she could-

The step broke. Jade’s foot caught.

She let out a shriek as she stumbled, falling onto the slippery steps; she hadn’t noticed coming down, but the stairs were covered in the same disgusting, sticky syrup of viscera and gore that covered the basement floor. It painted her hands and clothes and she let out a shriek, trying to stand up.

Terezi reached out for her, eyes wide in terror as the things were getting closer, almost to the foot of the steps. “Come on!” She cried. Jade grasped her hand and Terezi pulled, but the nauseating slickness made her slip.

“I’m stuck!” Jade thrashed as something touched her foot, instinctively kicking out. There was a sickening _crunch_ from behind her and she felt something wet splatter against her free ankle. She didn’t look down to see what it was - she didn’t want to see what it was. The thing that had been grabbing her went limp. “Terezi!”

“I’m trying!” Terezi wiped her hand off and, in a panic, grabbed Jade’s wrist. With strength she didn’t know she possessed, she wrenched Jade free, tumbling up the stairs and scrambling to her feet. Jade yelped in pain as her ankle gave a throb upon being pulled out. “C’mon, let’s go already! Fly us out of here!”

 _Oh._ “Right!” Jade scooped the troll up in her arms and, in a panic, shot from the basement like a bullet. Terezi was shaking in her arms, face buried in her shoulder and eyes shut tight. Jade couldn't say anything about it; she doubted that her legs would carry her right from the way that the rest of her was practically vibrating.

Wind whipped past them. Jade refused to touch ground until long after the sound of the shuffling corpses had faded away, long after they made it out the front door, out into the night air. The fresh smell of the wind made them both take a deep breath, relieved to be out of the stench and horror of that cursed house.

Jade set them down on the outskirts of town and her legs gave out on her. Immediately she crumpled. Terezi tried to catch her but was in no better shape; they collapsed together in a pile of trembling limbs onto the grass and sidewalk. Terezi rolled over and retched into the gutter.

It took several long moments for Jade to come back to her senses. She couldn’t stop shaking. Both of her ankles were caked in bloodied scratches; one from clawlike marks and the other full of splinters. She could tell it was sprained just from the way the ugly purple bruises had begun to swell. She laid back on the grass, waiting for Terezi to cough up the last of her stomach contents. Terezi reached for her hand and Jade took it tightly in her own, lacing her fingers together and squeezing supportively.

“We’re never going back there, right?” She whispered.

Terezi nodded.

“You don’t want to explore the rest of the house?”

“Don’t even tease.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a joke reference because the initial plot that I'd planned sounded so much like Thriller that I wanted to crawl in a hole. I'm such a sucker for cheesy horror, yall.


End file.
